The bitter and twisted, washed-up, hacks who compile this column had a big celebration planned for end-of-day shift tonight (Friday). Their three Bundy rum and coke bar fridges were full and top-up cartons of both stood by for the night’s celebrations.

And the reason? After close to a month of so-called subs at The Sydney Morning Herald finally working out how to folio (number) pages properly, our ex-hacks really did think their years-long campaign to plead with those “subeditors” who plopped their lazy arses down for a night sift at the SMH to ask a very simply question: does tomorrow’s edition have a wraparound where the pretend page one inside the book is folioed as PAGE THREE?

At top and below is what our compilers were faced when they viewed yesterday’s (Thursday’s) online edition. Is it any wonder why all those bar fridges needed topping up by noon yesterday.

For the umpteenth time over a very long journey, the MGH is forced to make the bleedingly obvious statement that page 3 of any newspaper in history has NEVER, EVER been called page one!

Of the countless fuckups SMH “subs” have made over this issue over that long journey, calling page three the front page or the cover page were bad enough but calling page 3 page 1 is the worst of the worst and the exact opposite of professional journalism.

So for what our shattered compilers now know won’t be the last time, here’s the latest version of the image we’ve used over and over and fucking over again in our ongoing, failed, bid to teach those SMH “subs” how to count.

And meanwhile, we’ll have to resume sending these little magnetic reminders to SMH subs to stick on the front of their own bar fridges or near their “subs” desk.

And, sadly, it looks like we’ll be using these graphics for quite some time yet as well.

Yes, we know, reader! You’re as upset and as miserable as we are but we’re the ones whose educational skills regarding the basics of journalism and particularly sub-editing have once again taken a reputational beating.

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